Precedent. Matt Marc Precedent. So I'm idling along watching some Wolverine Historian videos, as I am wont to do from time to time, and am watching the '91 Notre Dame game. In it we may see a hint of what Michigan will do with the Terrencible Talbott brothers when they hit campus: Michigan had Marc and Matt Elliott on the team that year and just said "screw it, this will look ridiculous but the fans must be informed":

I look forward to "TERRENCE TALBOTT" stretching down to said Talbott's armpit. Should have named the bigger one Terrence. Also, check out this guy in the endzone when Desmond makes his famous diving fourth-and-one catch:

1991, everyone!

Numbers 0, Old-Timey Hockey Wisdom 0… But Driving. The NCAA hockey rules committee is thinking about dumping full facemasks in favor of half-shields. This would seem to be an obviously less safe setup unless you're a hockey coach, at which point you resort to the old canards about respect and people getting their sticks up and so forth and so on that are similar to the old-timey complaints about how dumping the two-line pass would somehow clog up the game. Both objections are so counterintuitive that they say more about the person offering the explanation than the rule in question.

CONCLUSIONS: The use of a full face shield compared with half face shield by intercollegiate ice hockey players significantly reduced the playing time lost because of concussion, suggesting that concussion severity may be reduced by the use of a full face shield.

Er… that would be the exact opposite finding, one echoed by a second study by the same U of Calgary team and a third by the Mayo Clinic. It is possible that college hockey is less likely to feature severe goonery, but that just blows up the lack of respect argument. Half-shields don't seem to prevent vicious hits that result in season-long suspensions and potential criminal charges. (Fight unsupported anecdotes with unsupported anecdotes, I always say.)

Even if the hockey committee recommends it it's hard to imagine anyone outside the community looking at the available evidence and approving the change. The NCAA is not going to make a pointless move that all available evidence suggests will see more athletes injured.

Q: why is anyone pushing for this change? The only rationale I can see is that it's a way to mitigate junior teams playing up their "NHL style" of play. Moving to half-shields would remove the primary visual differentiator between CHL and NCAA hockey.

Mott content explosion. The WTKA Mott-a-thon and the weekend's Brian Griese-sponsored Mott golf outing have collectively raised a ton of money for the children's hospital—maybe this year fewer than three bucket people will accost me before every hockey game*—and produced a flood of what passes for news in May.

"We all love the University of Michigan and to me, that's where it begins and that's where it ends," Carr said. "I always felt that (in) college football, the players should be treated differently than they are in the NFL because they're going to school every day, they're trying to get degrees.

"Very few percentage-wise are going to play in the NFL. The criticism of the players, the pressure on the players has been dramatically increased because of the price of tickets, (and) all of the salaries we're able to provide coaches. All of that pressure is, I think, not a positive for the game. We have to rememvber, those are 18-, 19-, 20-to 21-year-old kids down there, and a lot of people don't want to hear it."

"I love it. When I was here as a student-athlete, the coaches used me a lot. I love the place and I think I'm a pretty good sales guy, particularly when the product is great. And the product here is great. ... When I'm called upon, if I can convince student-athletes and/or their parents why this is a great place to come and be a part of this tradition, by God I'm going to do it."

“I don’t know where he’s at running wise or anything like that, but I saw him the other day, he walked by the office, and he looks great,” Rodriguez said. “I think he was anxious to do more in the spring but obviously for precautionary reasons we held him out but I think he’ll be 100 percent certainly for August stuff.”

Q.

A. "I have only the vaguest recollection of what David Molk looks like since I haven't laid eyes on him since the Penn State game and will not see him until midway through the second quarter of the UConn game, but a complicated information relay involving at least sixteen different intermediaries who were in no way directed to discover information about Molk—one of them, in fact, is a Canadian—has, by happenstance, provided me a hazy outline of his recovery prognosis, which has a 10% chance of being extremely good and a 90% chance of being completely unknowable by me, Rich Rodriguez, for reasons of NCAA regulations and quantum."

Q.

A. "As you know, as the University of Michigan's head football coach I only take a minimal interest in the on-going progress of the football team, for reasons of NCAA violations, quantum, and AMC's Breaking Bad."

Q.

A. "Devin Gardner is somewhere between 4'1"" and 8'2". So rumor has it, at least. I have no direct knowledge of the situation."

*(Seriously. I just went past two bucket people, third bucket person. Whatever spare change I am going to put in a bucket has been spoken for.)

Another year, another home regional in which you are heavily favored. Michigan was given the #2 overall seed in the softball tournament—Alabama is #1—and will host a regional against Notre Dame, Wright State, and Illinois State this weekend. If you are wondering, yes, geography plays a major role in who goes where. Carol Hutchins:

“It’s why I coach because it makes you feel alive. It’s exciting, that’s what it is. It’s exciting.”

There's a joke in there somewhere, but I can't find it. Illinois and Ohio State are the only other Big Ten teams to make the field; neither are seeds.

Write a python script to parse mgoblog back unto the dawn on history, get a front page link even if you diss kicking the blog off with a "hello world" post. C syntax ENRAGE python user. Graagh. FYI: apparently about three million words have appeared in posts by yours truly. I won't say I wrote them all given the prevalence of blockquotes on the site, but I probably wrote half of them.

if Brian noticed the pink shorts guy due to my comment on the video, since it's one of about three. Probably not, since they're a little hard to miss. I wish more joggers would realize that those short stopped being cool well before 1991.

Even with the pink shorts. The Elliotts always deserve a shout out.
And what's the fine line of booing to the point you get a bottle chucked at your head and publishing that a kid is "just not good at football"? Hmmm.... But, per usual, Lloyd has words to be heeded.

if Brian noticed the pink shorts guy due to my comment on the video, since it's one of about three. Probably not, since they're a little hard to miss. I wish more joggers would realize that those short stopped being cool well before 1991.

I knew 1991. 1991 was a good friend of mine. And....pink shorts were pretty douchey even then. I'm not one to laugh at a guy wearing madras in the early 60s, bell bottoms or plaid in the 70s, or rocking the mullet and acid-washed jeans in the 80s. If it's 1983, you can pull your socks up to your knees and sport the Dorothy Hammil House of Androgyny, parted-in-the-middle haircut and I won't laugh.

But that dude in the endzone looks like an idiot. He looked like an idiot 20 years ago and he looks like an idiot now. A dumbass forever trapped in the amber of time, YouTube, and a complete and total sense of self-awareness.

Is anybody else old enough to remember when the fourth-and-inches Desmond catch was simply referred to as The Catch?

That still stands as the defining moment for me as a Michigan sports fan. I think it marks the beginning of my obsession w/ UM football (I was 13 yrs. old). I watched a lot of games as a kid but that moment exists in the back of my memory on constant slow-motion replay.

It's so important to remember the context of that play. UM had lost to ND 4 times in a row prior to that game, most recently in heartbreaking fashion. Throw in the transition to Gary Moeller (from Bo's 3 yards and a cloud of dust). The call, the pump fake, and the unbelievable catch--amazing.

I've seen a lot of great UM games and witnessed some unforgettable moments (Desmond striking the Heisman pose later that year, Dreisbach to Mercury Hayes vs. Virginia in Lloyd's debut, Countless Woodson plays in '97, Brady vs. Alabama in the Orange bowl, Braylon vs. MSU in 2004, Manningham vs. PSU, Forcier to Mathews last year, etc...), but The Catch will always stand as the greatest for me (hence my avatar).

Thanks for mentioning the game Brian. The pink shorts only add to the legend of that moment!

SIGH. I was a student at the time. I remember jumping up and grabbing my best friend yelling in the stadium "that's the dumbest call I've ever seen...but it worked!!!!" (People forget how short it was on 4th down, and that they audibled into the call). You think you hate ND now...man, back then, after 4 in a row...and Holtz...makes ND now seem like a lovefest. Especially after the previous year where we may have played the best game I've ever seen us play in a loss. (That, and when they brought out the 3x5 card to measure to see if we made the 1st down....grrr).

I grew up in NC. When I made the annual Christmas trip home that year, my brother's best friend stopped by, sporting an App State t-shirt. He had gone to a host of stores looking for one... they were apparently flying off the shelves, and this was in the Raleigh area, some 200 miles away from the school. As it got later and stores were closing (this was on Christmas eve), he started just calling around, found a store that had one, convinced them to save it and then stay open until he could get there to pick it up. There's no telling what sob story he told 'em. But all this..... just to get a reaction out of me. I guess in some way I should be honored that he went to such lengths. However, I was not.

So yeah. If those references went away completely, I'd be happy with that.

IIRC Kevin and Kelvin Grady simply had "GRADY" on their jerseys last fall. I bet the Talbotts go with "TALBOTT" for both. People who care enough to look should be able to distinguish a 6'4" 270-lb DL from a 5'11" 170-lb DB, and if they can't, they probably can't read the back of a jersey anyway.

When I was a kid the Browns had both Robert E. Jackson (OG) and Robert L. Jackson (LB) on their roster. I think their jerseys had their names as I typed them.

Finally, I think there was a plethora of R. Smiths on the OSU roster 20 years ago, thus the running back with ROBT. SMITH on his back.